Cracks show in China’s vision for model ethnic unity village

HOTAN UNITY NEW VILLAGE, China — In this corner of China’s far west, rows of identical white concrete houses with red metal roofs rise abruptly above the sand dunes of the harsh Taklamakan Desert. A Chinese flag flutters above the settlement, and a billboard at the entrance says, “Welcome to the Hotan Unity New Village.”

This is a Communist Party showcase for its efforts to tame Xinjiang province, the heartland of China’s often restive Uighur Muslim minority and an unforgiving terrain. The free or low-cost houses are assigned alternately to Uighurs and Han Chinese, who work side by side in greenhouses and send their children to school together. It is the future the party envisions for Xinjiang after a massive security crackdown that has sent by some estimates more than a million Muslims to internment camps, and many of their children to orphanages.

But a closer look at what the party calls “ethnic unity” reveals what isn’t there: mosques for Muslim worshipers, or traditional Uighur brick homes, often adorned with pointed arches and carved decorations. In their place are colorful murals of what authorities consider to be scenes of unity, such as a Uighur man and his family holding a Chinese flag.

In the village’s new public square, Uighur children banter with Han Chinese children in fluent Mandarin, the language of the Han majority, rather than in their native tongue. Young Uighur women wear Western clothing without the headscarves that are part of traditional Muslim dress.

While these are voluntary settlements with economic benefits, experts and Uighur activists believe they are part of an aggressive government campaign to erode the identities of the Central Asian groups who called the region home long before waves of Han migrants arrived in recent decades.

“‘Ethnic unity’ is a euphemism for taming, breaking the Uighur people,” says Joanne Smith Finley, an expert in Uighur identity at Newcastle University in Britain. “This is putting flowery bright wallpaper over a damp wall, a rotting wall.”

Indeed, there are signs of enduring mistrust. As elsewhere in Xinjiang, high walls around homes are topped with barbed wire, and police officers stand guard from behind fences at the entrance of the village. Adults don’t mix socially.

And the city says there are 534 households in the compound, but most of the houses are empty.